How to solve the immigration issue

The Republican Party has it in its power to settle the immigration issue once and for all. And it can begin with tomorrow’s procedural vote in the Senate on health care reform.

All the Senators need do is hold the line against reform and entice at least one Democrat to join them in talking the bill to death. They can use the same filibuster techniques that allowed reactionary segregationists to stall civil rights legislation for generations.

Next, they only need wait while the status quo of skyrocketing health costs continues to do its work, undermining American business, boosting the relative competitiveness of other countries, bankrupting state governments, and sinking individual wealth into a black hole of rising cost and declining coverage.

Keep this up for another decade or two, and the immigration problem will go away on its own. Instead, we’ll have net emigration, as Americans leave home to seek jobs in more prosperous countries, like Mexico.